Sorry for my lack of knowledge here, but i was just wondering about security and Outlook.

If i have lots of emails being downloaded to my computer by Outlook, then if these have a virus or spyware attached to them, then would i be infected seeing as outlook has just downloaded the emails to my Hard Drive instead of off the Email companies server????

Or have i completely got that all wrong, just learning, still.

Thank you

Never open any attachment if you don't know who its from. All your emails with or without attachments are saved in *.dbx files. Therefore they can't do any damage there. You could save all your attachments to a folder then just scan that folder for virus's. Never open any until you've scanned.

No you can't be infected until you open these files.

E-mails are generally scanned first by your E-mail provider/ISP and second by your resident Anti-virus as part of its real-time protection. Additionally, many E-mail services will strip off dubious file types (zipped files, or .exe files for example) automatically.
Obviously, one should never open any file attachment unless it is 1)expected and 2)from a known source. Reading incoming E-mails in "plain text" is also recommended.
Regards,
John